The History of how the World Wide Web Blossomed

web design company mumbai world wide webThe seeds of the Internet were planted in the early 1960′s. J. C. R. Licklider of MIT proposed a global network of computers in 1962 and moved to the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency (DARPA) to lead the development work. In 1969 the Internet, then known as Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), was brought online, which connected the computers at four major universities. Over the next few years, additional universities and research institutions were added to the network. One major goal of the Internet was to provide a communications network that would still function if some of the sites were destroyed by a nuclear attack.

Then in 1974 Bolt, Beranek, and Newman released Telenet, the first commercial version of ARPANET, and the public was exposed to how computers could be used in daily life. The early Internet was not user-friendly, being used only by computer experts, engineers, scientists, and librarians. The Internet continued to develop, mature, and expand throughout the 1970s. Through the late 1970s and into the 1980s, the common language of all Internet computers, TCP/IP, was created.

The Internet as it is known today came into existence, and in 1982 the term Internet was formally coined. During the mid- 1980′s the increasing availability of PCs and super-minicomputers allowed many companies to also attach to the Internet. In 1990 ARPANET was decommissioned, leaving only the vast network of networks called the Internet. In 1991 Gopher, the first really friendly interface, was developed at the University of Minnesota.

Although it was designed to ease campus communications, it was freely distributed on the Internet. In 1989 another significant event took place when Tim Berners-Lee and others at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) proposed a new protocol for distributing information. This protocol was based upon hypertext, a system of embedding links in text to go to other text. The language created in conjunction with the protocol was the HyperText Markup Language (HTML). In 1991 it was released on the Internet.

HTML presented a limited set of objects and interaction styles, and in many ways was a step backward for interface design, especially when compared to the growth of interactive computing over the previous four decades. However, it was never intended to be as flexible as the GUI interface, and users were expected to be more technical and more interested in function than form.

The hypertext concept was first presented in 1945 by Vannevar Bush, and the term itself was coined in 1965. The first hypertext system released to the user community was the University of Vermont’s PROMIS in 1976. Apple’s HyperCard helped bring the idea to a wider audience in 1988. Berners-Lee’s work is credited with hatching the World Wide Web (WWW) in 1991. By definition, the World Wide Web is a global information space in which people can read and write using computers connected to the Internet. The term is often used as a synonym for the Internet, but this is incorrect. The Web is a service that operates over the Internet, just as e-mail operates over the Internet (Wikipedia.org, 2006).

In 1992 Delphi was the first to provide commercial online Internet access to subscribers. The first popular graphics-based hypertext browser was Mosaic, created by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois in 1993. Mosaic was one of the ingredients contributing to the initial overwhelming success of the Web, and it provided the basis for browsers to follow, including Netscape and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. (NCSA halted development of Mosaic in 1997.)

The Netscape Navigator browser, first released in 1994, was the product of some of those who left the University of Illinois’ NCSA project to work for a newly founded company called Mosaic Communications. (Mosaic was later renamed Netscape Communications.) The potential for Web browsing software such as Mosaic had become obvious, and a need was waiting to be fulfilled. Netscape Navigator was the most successful browser, with its market share percentage in the 80s, until Microsoft declared war and entered the market with its Internet Explorer, also based upon Mosaic, in 1995. Opera, a browser for computers with small resources and not based upon Mosaic, also was released. That year also saw the coming of AOL, CompuServe, Prodigy, Yahoo, and Lycos.

The Internet’s shift to a commercial entity was now complete. The National Science Foundation (NSF), which had been sponsoring the Internet, also ended its support that year. In 1994 The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was formed to promote and develop standards for the Web.

Throughout 1995 and 1996 the Internet Explorer–Netscape Navigator skirmishing continued. Microsoft’s most significant advancement was Internet Explorer 3.0, implementing features from Navigator 3 and other significant enhancements. In 1998, because of severe competition from Microsoft, Netscape decided to make its Web browser package available to everyone. Mozilla then entered the arena. In 2003 Apple released version 1.0 of Safari, a Web browser for the Macintosh. In 2003 Microsoft also stopped further development of a version of Internet Explorer for the Macintosh. In 2004 Mozilla Firefox was introduced, a browser that would become Internet Explorer’s biggest competitor. Today the Web is the world’s superhighway.

Atin Dasgupta is director and founder of Leveljam. Web Design Mumbai Company Leveljam delivers strategic digital business solutions for businesses small and big alike. Each project that we take on starts with careful listening and understanding of your requirements. We ask, we analyze, we discover the right solution for your company’s needs. This is followed by strategy and planning. We take a planned approach to executing every project as we believe each client and project is unique. Contact us here.

Atin Dasgupta is director and founder of Leveljam. Web Design Mumbai Company Leveljam delivers strategic digital business solutions for businesses small and big alike. Each project that we take on starts with careful listening and understanding of your requirements. We ask, we analyze, we discover the right solution for your company’s needs. This is followed by strategy and planning. We take a planned approach to executing every project as we believe each client and project is unique. Contact us here.